Hobgoblin Night: Mask and Dagger 2

by Teresa Edgerton

  Sera stopped dead in the middle of the road, experiencing considerable difficulty catching her breath. "Premature?" she managed, when she was able to speak again. "My dear Lord . . . my dear Mr. Carstares, it has been almost two years since we last met, and in all that time—"

  "It has been far longer than that," he said. "It has been . . . an eternity."

  And he immediately began a long explanation: why he had not come looking for her at once, how he had followed the Duchess to the New World and subsequently lost track of her. "Nor was it so easy to find you as I had originally hoped," he continued earnestly, as they resumed their progress down the road. "Indeed, I should not have done so as soon as I did, were it not for Lady Ursula."

  "Lady Ursula?" said Sera, who was beginning to feel she had experienced enough shocks for any one day. "Lady Ursula Bowker? But what had she to do with it?"

  A tiny frown marred his lordship's alabaster brow. "It was Lady Ursula—now Lady Ursula Vizbeck—who told me she met you here in Hobb's Church."

  "She did no such thing," said Sera. "That is, she may have been here, for all I know, but she certainly never spoke to me. And I rather fancy she was not here, for she could not do so—could not visit anyplace, you know—without causing a stir among the male inhabitants."

  Lady Ursula, besides being strikingly beautiful, did have a way of making her presence felt, as Lord Skelbrooke must be the first to admit. His frown darkened. "Then I am at a loss to discover why she should pretend that she was here. Unless . . . it is possible, I suppose, that Lady Ursula is in the Duchess's pay and was sent to lure me here."

  He continued to turn the matter over in his mind, walking along with his hands clasped behind him and his gaze fixed on the road. "Yet, if so, it was clumsily done! She must have known that you would deny seeing her. And whatever else she may be, Lady Ursula is no fool."

  Only one solution came to mind. "Well, it may be that the Duchess employed her to spy on me and to convey the information, but has not succeeded in buying her entire loyalty. Was it a mistake, or a friendly warning, meant to alert us to some danger? Did she speak to me to oblige the Duchess, or to spite her? The course of their friendship has not always been a smooth one. I suppose that we will never know."

  "Yes," said Sera, lifting her skirts an inch or two, as the road led them up a slight incline. By now, she was perfectly composed, and proud of herself for being so. "There is little, I believe, that Lady Ursula would not do for money, but she has no reason, that I know of, to wish Elsie or I any serious harm."

  Lord Skelbrooke glanced up, smiling faintly. "I fear that the lady has some small reason to be cross with me." Yet it occurred to him that perhaps Lady Ursula had been no more attracted to him than he was to her, that her attempts to flirt with him had been only a method of getting close, without revealing her true intentions. This was a blow to his vanity, to be sure, but far more than that, it was a relief.

  "It may be," said Skelbrooke, "that the Duchess, having better information, has arrived in Cordelia before me, and that it serves her purpose to gather us all here together."

  "I have reason to believe that the Duchess and Jarl Skogsrå are certainly somewhere not very distant," said Sera, wincing slightly, for she knew that an argument was coming.

  Now it was his lordship's turn to stop walking. "If that is so, you and Miss Elsie must make haste to leave Cordelia as soon as possible!"

  But Sera explained about Elsie's dream, the ghostly Jarl, and the conclusions that she and Elsie had subsequently drawn. "It seems that there is no place Elsie and I can go that the Duchess and Skogsrå cannot follow her," said Sera, as they resumed their leisurely progress toward Mothgreen Hall.

  And really, it was altogether too much that he should suddenly appear after all this time and suppose that he could instantly take charge. "If we must face the Duchess eventually, I believe we had far better stand our ground here, where Elsie and I have friends, and the Duchess does not."

  Though Skelbrooke endeavored to convince Sera otherwise, he was eventually forced to realize the futility. "But then, at least, you must allow me to caution you," he said gravely, as they paused outside the gates of Mothgreen Academy. "You must go nowhere alone. Do not so much as step across your threshold without some trusty friend to accompany you, preferably some gentleman friend, such as Jedidiah or myself.

  "I wonder," he added, opening one side of the wrought-iron gate and standing aside for Sera to pass through, "if you would mind very much should I claim kinship with you—or perhaps, more convincingly, with Miss Elsie—and invite myself for an extended visit at the Hall?"

  "You are very welcome to do so," said Sera, leading the way down the tree-lined drive. "That is," she added with a blush, "I do not believe that Miss Barebones would have any great objection. And perhaps Elsie would find your presence reassuring. "

  "And for yourself?" he asked, with a look of earnest inquiry. "Should you welcome me, as well?"

  Sera refused to meet that disturbing grey-eyed gaze. "I, also, would find some comfort in a gentleman's protection, just at this time."

  "I see," said Skelbrooke, sounding disappointed. "Why then, if I can serve you, in even so small a way, I am naturally pleased to do so."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Which finds Discord reigning at Stillwater Hall.

  Stillwater Hall, out in the marsh, though once a very fine house, was now dilapidated and damp. The lions at the gate had a shapeless appearance, rendered nearly featureless by a covering of moist green moss. Willows, laurels, and dark yew trees lined the drive, forming a dense wall of untamed foliage. And the porch, as well as the nine steps leading up to it, was slick with more of the same green moss. Though the builders had displayed a degree of foresight in erecting walls of grey stone, wooden floors and a shingle roof suffered in the damp, as did windowsills, doors, and thresholds; and it seemed that every metal fixture in the house was either stained blood-red with rust or blue-green with verdigris.

  In a great, gloomy chamber, made even darker and more dismal by rotting purple draperies over the windows—a room so vast and chilly that a roaring fire on the hearth did little to warm it, and three branches of candles were insufficient to light it—in that mournful chamber sat the Duchess and Thomas Kelly, resting in high-backed ebonwood chairs, whiling away the long hours between sunset and bedtime.

  "Why do you delay?" said the Duchess, with an angry shake of her head. "Have I not provided you with a laboratory and all the equipment you could possibly need? At great expense, I might add, and the more so because the whole had to be done with the utmost secrecy. Yet despite this, you ignore our agreement, you do nothing at all toward the creation of a living homunculus."

  "We had an agreement," said Kelly, his waxy skin glowing faintly by candlelight. "I would help you to exact your revenge, and I would also create for you the homunculus, but you would assist me to regain my books. I have, I believe, been of some material use to you in arranging the former, and I do not see why I should do anything more, until I have received due payment for services already rendered."

  The Duchess regarded him narrowly. "I wonder . . ." she said. "Yes, I begin to wonder whether or not you do carry the formula about in your head, as you have been at such pains to convince me. Or is it, perhaps, that you require the books before you can even begin?"

  Kelly made a motion with one gaunt hand. "I know all that I need to know."

  Yet the Duchess continued to eye him suspiciously. If Kelly was unable to proceed without his books, if he had not learned the formula by heart, then what good was he without the books—and what particular use (for that matter) once she had obtained them?

  Not a scrap of use in the world, she decided, her lips tightening in a hard line. Because if I have the formula and all the equipment, I can work the spells myself.

  Kelly moved uneasily in his chair, as if he guessed what direction her thoughts were tending. "You are suddenly most impatient, oddly impatient for a woman who commissi
oned the destruction of the machine made by Jedidiah Braun and the gnome Sammuel Jonas. Had you not done so, we might have discovered its purpose long since. But you are so intent on your petty revenge, on gathering together all the actors in your little drama—"

  "I have more on my mind, at present, than my petty revenge, as you are pleased to call it." With an angry little flounce, the Duchess rose from her chair and drifted toward the fire. A creature made primarily of the elements flame and air, she could tolerate the occasional river damps of Thornburg, but the perpetual humidity of this moist climate caused her severe discomfort.

  "And I have a very good idea what the machine is for. As I believe you have as well, for all you might wish to pretend ignorance," she said over her shoulder. "I wish to see the device in operation, but that I cannot do if the parties involved load up their machine and sail off for unknown parts. That is why I ordered the engine destroyed: so that I might have ample time to make arrangements of my own, before the machine is whisked away."

  "But then, in the meantime," said Kelly impatiently, "why not send your Mr. Hooke to steal my books? Those books are more to me than you imagine. They and I are bound by the Fates, united by the strongest magics."

  "In which case," said the Duchess sweetly, "you may easily wait a bit longer to recover them, knowing as you do that they must return to you eventually. What is a week or two . . . indeed, what is a year or a decade to either of us? My kind live long, and you—you are already dead."

  She turned her back to the fire. "And I do not wish to tip my hand too soon, do not wish my young friends to suspect that either you or I may be found in Cordelia." She narrowed her eyes. "Indeed, my good sir, indeed I must warn you. Do not do anything to hinder me in my aims, or I may decide to continue on without your assistance."

  The Duchess swept out of the room, but Thomas Kelly remained motionless in his chair. He was wondering what the Duchess would do if she realized how much he needed those books. Though his mind continued to work with the same cold precision, though he remembered with great clarity his ruling purpose, he retained only fragments of memories from his former life. Not one of the formulas he had memorized as a living man had survived the transition from life to death, and half way back again. To make matters worse, his body was finally beginning to rot, to slowly decompose, a process he did not know how to effectively halt, without the knowledge contained in those volumes. Therefore (unknown to the Duchess), he had already tried to exert his power over the books in order to bring them back to him. An attempt which had not only failed, but may have announced his presence to those who now possessed them.

  And he wondered: what would the Duchess do if she knew just how much he had already guessed about the machine at Mr. Herring's, or how neatly that marvelous engine fell in with his own schemes and ambitions.

  ***

  The next afternoon, Thomas Kelly paid a visit to Jarl Skogsrå in the troll's draughty bedchamber. The room boasted a large fireplace, but the hearth was bare, as though Skogsrå had lacked the energy to bring in the wood, lacked even the energy to hunt up a servant and command that service—as he apparently lacked the energy now to rise from his seat in a wing chair, or to offer his visitor the other chair.

  Kelly took the chair anyway, which happened to stand by the empty fireplace.

  These last weeks had not been kind to Skogsrå. He had lost the sleek, well-fed look which had formerly characterized him. But it was more than that, thought Kelly, wondering what diseases trolls might suffer from. Clad only in his breeches and a stained cambric shirt, with his brassy hair hanging lank and dark around his shoulders, Skogsrå looked tired and ill, as well as disheveled.

  Kelly noted, with mild interest, that the monster Cecile, standing motionless in a corner, was in a similar state of undress. "Do you bed with her, I wonder?"

  "It is no business of yours what I do with her," the troll replied sullenly. His shifted his position slightly, causing the unwieldy hoof at the end of his leg to scrape along the floorboards. It was a clear sign that something was seriously wrong, when Skogsrå no longer sought to conceal his disfigurement.

  "I ask merely out of intellectual curiosity," said the magician, with the smile that sat ill on his cadaverous face. "I suppose that the creature has her physical attractions. But even for a troll, I had thought that something more was required."

  The Jarl stared at his hands. "She is stupid, Cecile, she is dull and placid . . . but me, I am no longer young. They say that our races, Man and troll, were once the same. It often happens among your kind, I think, that a male of my years forms just such an attachment, for a pretty young woman with a placid temper and negligible intelligence."

  "That may be so," said Kelly, his lips twitching scornfully. "Indeed, I did not entirely understand these things when I was fully alive, and now—" He folded his hands in his lap. "I apprehend, at least, that you have some value for the monster. And perhaps, perhaps you do not know that when Elsie Vorder dies, her double will die also."

  The Jarl stiffened. "I do not believe you. Why should I believe you? The Duchess says nothing of this."

  "If you do not believe what I tell you, you must work out the logic for yourself. If you are capable of doing so," said Kelly. "You know that the golem obtains life by sharing Miss Vorder's essence. They are, in some sense, the same person."

  The troll appeared to consider, sitting there with his head cocked to one side. "Yes," he said at last. "That would explain . . . it would explain some things that I do not wish to speak about."

  "In that case, you must comprehend that when Elsie Vorder dies, the monster will return to its former state: a featureless thing of inanimate clay. Naturally," the sorcerer added carelessly, "it can be reanimated again, in a similar manner, using blood from another source. But then it must assume an entirely new aspect. And that would not satisfy you so well, I think."

  "No," said the Jarl, shifting ponderously in his chair. "That would not satisfy me. I wish to keep her exactly as she is. But perhaps you will tell me: what do you expect me to do about this? You must expect something, or you would not have come here."

  Kelly gestured in the direction of the mute figure standing in the corner. "You might take your Cecile and flee with her. Then Elsie Vorder would grow strong and healthy again, the Duchess would have to find another means to lure the unfortunate girl into her trap, and Cecile would be safe . . . at least for a time."

  "I might do that, yes," Skogsrå said dully. "But that, alas, would require more enterprise than I seem to possess. Once, the audacity of such a venture would have appealed to me. But now I have no strength. I am not getting enough blood, I think."

  Kelly raised a skeptical eyebrow. "I have seen you consume enormous quantities of flesh and blood."

  The Jarl shook his head sadly. "Beef and pork and lamb. They are not enough; they do not serve me as the blood of a human female would. But the Duchess does not allow me to make use of the young women in Moonstone or Hobb's Church. She fears it might lead to comment."

  Kelly sneered at him. "You are superstitious, I regret to say. It cannot possibly matter to you where the blood comes from."

  The troll made a feeble motion. "You think so? But what, after all, do you know about it? I suppose you account yourself wise, but you are not of my race. I know what I need: a woman in whom the life force runs strong and passionate, a woman who will go through the rituals with me. It has been too long since I took a bride."

  Again Kelly stretched his thin blue lips in a sneer. "Well, well, you are a pitiful creature altogether. But perhaps if you were not too weak and cowardly to defy the Duchess, I might be able to arrange something for you."

  The sorcerer leaned back in his chair. Day by day, his movements were becoming smaller and more lifeless. Soon, perhaps, he would not be able to move at all; he would be reduced to the state he had been when first discovered in his coffin by Jed and Caleb Braun. "I might be willing to help you to a bride. Providing, that is, that you promised t
o afterwards find the energy to take the golem and escape with her."

  The troll stared at him with a certain dim suspicion. "And why would you do this? What prompts this so generous impulse?"

  "My own self-interest," replied Kelly. "I believe that the Duchess now considers me expendable, if not absolutely a thorn in her side. For my part, I wish to continue our association, at least for a time. And the Duchess must have someone to serve her. If you are gone, then my value increases, and the Duchess will be less inclined to dispose of me—as ruthlessly as she plans to dispose of your Cecile."

  But the troll remained suspicious. "But why should you fear the Duchess, you who are virtually invincible, who can kill with a single touch? Why do you not dispose of her?"

  "I may yet be driven to do so," Kelly replied coldly. "But, as I told you, I wish to continue our association for some time to come. I believe the Duchess may be of considerable use to me.

  "Also," he added, "I kill with a touch by draining the essence of my victims, which serves to sustain me. But a vessel can only contain so much. Then, too, there is the strength of the container to be considered. I am stronger, in some ways, than when I was mortal. I am impervious to fire, poison, and most forms of injury, but still this human frame has its limitations. The Duchess, however, for all her apparent fragility, is made of matter at once stronger and more subtle."

  Skogsrå continued to stare at him with dull, discouraged eyes. "I do not understand you."

  Kelly rose from his chair, stood looking down at the troll with ill-concealed contempt. "When I drained Gottfried Jenk of his last remaining years, I found the draught invigorating. And those few weeks or seasons that I gained when I had granddaughter Sera in my grasp, they had a similarly beneficial effect. But the Duchess . . ." Kelly twitched a careless shoulder. ". . . it is hard to tell with these hybrids how long they may live. The Gracious Lady might, in the natural course of things, be expected to continue on perhaps for another century or two. And were I to attempt to compass her entire life-span in a single draught, it might be more than this human vessel could contain without shattering."